I began my day with a meeting with my constituency office staff. They are the people that first receive the calls to my office, and draft the letters for me to send.  I discuss their work regularly with them, to ensure my office is doing the best job they can.

Together with Lyn Brown, I then met with a group of local businessmen in Green Street. Those I met represent roughly 200 business owners on the street. Some have been operating on Green Street since the 1960s, and live above their shops.  Green Street has developed into a thriving shopping centre over the past twenty years.  One consequence is that, as their business rate liability has been re-evaluated, many of the premises have been assessed with a much higher rateable value for the new five year period starting from April 2010.  We discussed how we could gather evidence to support a lower valuation.

In the afternoon I visited two local places of worship: a Mosque on St George’s Road, Forest Gate, where we discussed problems affecting the business of one of the mosque leaders; and the Gurdwara Dasmesh Darbar on Rosebery Avenue, Manor Park, where members explained how they wanted the proposed 2011 census questionnaire amended in order more accurately to measure the size of the Sikh community.

In the evening I spoke to the largest audience of my life – some 30,000 Christians at the London Festival of Life, at the Excel Centre.  I commented to one of the ushers on the vast size of the gathering.  “That’s nothing”, he said.  “You should come to our event in Nigeria in a couple of weeks – there will be a million and a half there!”   My speech was on the theme of “Life to the Full”, about Government policies to support families, and about how faith is a great starting point for getting involved in politics. 
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